Microstrip circuits are used in many applications, such as radar or other applications involving millimeter wave or microwave frequencies. The use of microstrip circuitry is advantageous in that it is extremely small in size and low in weight, making it desirable for many applications in both the military and commercial equipment. Many applications involve the combination of several discrete microstrip components assembled to form a portion of or a complete system. Many of these discrete microstrip components are fabricated on a substrate of a material having dielectric properties that are advantageous or optimized for the particular function and construction of the discrete microstrip component. Therefore, in combining these discrete microstrip components, it is often necessary to assemble the components made from a wide range of dielectric materials with different dielectric constants. This often requires abutting the different dielectric materials together and fabricating quarter wavelength stubs and using metalization and soldering techniques for circuit continuity. These assembling techniques are difficult to accomplish and costly. Additionally, they are bandwidth limited resulting in increased circuit losses.
While advancements have been made in the assembly of microstrip components to other dielectric wave guide components, there has been little development in the assembly of discrete microstrip components with other discrete microstrip components. Two techniques for assembling a microstrip to a dielectric wave guide are disclosed in an article entitled "Straightforward Approach Using Broadband Transitions" by D. R. Singh and C. R. Seashore, which appeared in the September, 1984 issue of the "Microwaves and R. F. Magazine", and U.S. Pat. No. 4,745,377 entitled "Microstrip to Dielectric Wave Guide Transition" issuing to Stern et al on May 17, 1988, which is herein incorporated by reference. However, these two publications only disclose techniques for the assembly of a microstrip to a dielectric waveguide and do not provide any teaching of combining multiple discrete microstrip components together.
Therefore, there is a need for providing a technique to assemble discrete microstrip components easily and efficiently, while minimizing circuit losses.